Obama embracing Roosevelt’s middle-class appeal

President Barack Obama is channeling President Theodore Roosevelt, embracing a mantle of economic fairness for the nation’s middle class Tuesday that draws parallels to the progressive reformer’s calls for a “square deal” for regular Americans more than a century ago.

Obama intends to use a speech in small town Osawatomie, Kan. — where Roosevelt delivered his “New Nationalism” address in 1910 — to lay out economic themes of giving middle-class workers a fair shake and greater financial security, concepts the president will probably return to repeatedly during the 2012 campaign.

Only a month before Republican voters begin choosing a presidential nominee, the White House said Obama would describe this as a “make-or-break moment” for the middle class and those hoping to join it that demands balance and rules of the road to help strengthen working families.

Press secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday that Obama will argue, “We face a choice between a country where too few do well and too many struggle to get by, or one where we’re all in it together, everyone engages in fair play, everyone gets a fair shake and fair shot.”

“The president today will give a speech that will really make clear that the middle class is facing a make or break moment,” Carney told reporters aboard Air Force One before landing in Kansas City, Mo.

Obama is pressuring Congress to support an extension of a payroll tax cut that the White House says will give a $1,000 tax cut to a typical family earning $50,000 a year. The president is coupling that with efforts to renew a program of extended unemployment benefits set to expire Dec. 31.

“Now is not the time to slam on the brakes. Now is the time to step on the gas,” Obama said Monday at the White House. “Now is the time to keep growing the economy, to keep creating jobs, to keep giving working Americans the boost that they need.”

Republicans and Democrats in Congress said a holiday-season package was beginning to take shape that would cost $180 billion or more over a decade. It would include not only the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefit renewals, but also a provision to avert a threatened 27 percent reduction in fees to doctors who treat Medicare patients.

Even so, Republicans continued objecting to a scaled-back version of the bill by Senate Democrats partly paid for by raising taxes on people earning $1 million or more a year.

Republicans say such a tax increase would hurt job creation by businesses, and strong GOP opposition to that bill is likely to lead to its defeat on the Senate floor later this week. With polls showing public support for boosting taxes on the wealthy, Republicans say Democrats are going ahead with that Senate vote in an attempt to embarrass them.

“This is not a compromise,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. “This is nothing more than another bill designed to fail so Democrats can have another week of fun and games on the Senate floor.”